The International Express Eventing competition was held in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium last weekend.  There was much debate as to whether it would be successful but with big names involved, both on the competitor side and the judging panel, and a late minute Sky deal the organisers were set to prove everyone wrong. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Arlene Phillips (Strictly Come Dancing judge) were drawn in to judge the horse and riders’ interpretation of music. Tara Palmer Tomkinson and Jodie Kidd were drafted in for the half time entertainment and all 20 riders considered to be the cream of the crop were competing.  How could this not be a success?  With all those names in that venue it was sure to be the ‘great day out’ that I mentioned before.

The key to success was simple.  Give the spectators a memorable experience.  Offer them shopping, horses, entertainment, and a social experience.  However whilst the Millennium stadium is great for the rugby, it was sadly not the right venue for Eventing.  It was too harsh for this audience.  There was no Pimms tent or healthy eating vendors for the socialising I had planned.  Instead after the 45minute queue I was faced with a choice of crisps, or a Yorkshire pudding roll (whatever that is?).  Then there was a definite lack of shopping.  Rumour had it, not that I found them, that there were 6 stalls; two saddle makers, a Musto stand, and a few horse feed products.  Hardly a great shopping experience to engage the punters.

The half time entertainment caused additional concern.  Jodie Kidd and Tara Palmer Tomkinson were due to ‘jump off’.  Jodie went first and completed the course.  Tara stepped up and after five fences withdrew in absolute terror.  I can’t imagine organisers were very pleased with her performance after the fee that I’m sure she was paid to entertain the fans.

In terms of the equine content, the line up was spectacular.  I’m sure they couldn’t have hoped for more.  However, the momentum that had built up throughout the day came to a rather abrupt end with the tragic loss of one of the Equestrian worlds greatest horses. Mary King’s Call Again Cavalier fell half way through the cross-country course and was later put down.  Hats off to the emergency team who reacted quickly and efficiently to get it all cleared from the public eye.   However, his tragedy may have an adverse affect on the future of the event.

A second incident in the ring occurred when an awkward jump from a horse exposed a hole in one of the fences.  After a sterling effort from the course designers to fix it, the decision was made to remove the fence.  This meant that half the fleet would have jumped it and half would not.  With many horses and riders falling victim to the technicality of the course, this seemed an odd decision to make.  How would those who had already jumped be compensated? A decision was made to reimburse those who were on the leader board with a 2second time reduction.  With this bizarre decision being made, it seemed that those who hadn’t completed the course had grounds to complain, as  they had had the extra pressure of an extra fence.  Rules were definitely being made up as they went along, sadly devaluing the contest in the process.

The event ended with Oliver Townend picking up the £100,000 prize money but I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a success.  My experience as a fan was that the venue was the wrong choice.  With only approximately 15,000 people in the stadium, we did rattle around a little.  The food was selective, there was no shopping and the equine event management was debatable. Originally I said this would be a success if they managed to make it a ‘great day out’.  In my opinion it was not.  The organisers did manage to get a TV broadcaster onboard but the coverage was shown five days after the event.  Not ideal.  There were obvious teething problems and I hope that the tragic loss of Mary King’s horse doesn’t mean the end for this competition.  I believe with a rethink it can be repeated and return a much stronger concept.

By Holly Anderson on December 5th, 2008

Tags: Equestrianism, Experiential marketing

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If you get the product right, everything else follows.

So General Motors has inevitably parted company with Tiger Woods. Some commentators have claimed that this somehow proves that endorsements of this type don’t work. Nonsense. In Tiger’s case, Nike and Accenture in particular disprove the point. Tiger may be a miracle-worker, but not even he could have saved GM from its current predicament. The problem isn’t Tiger, it’s GM.

Also this week, the PGA Tour announced the FeEx Cup’s third format overhaul in as many years. As I wrote back in September, in this case, the problem is also the product - the Cup format. Only time will tell if, this time, the PGA has got the product right.

Which brings me to the latest example of NPD on the PGA Tour, the Kodak Challenge. Like both the FedEx Cup and the Red Bull Final 5, it’s a competition-within-a-competition, its USP being to link great holes on different courses, with $1m going to the player who posts the lowest score on the Kodak Challenge Holes over the season.

Again, only time will tell if Kodak has got the product right - on which point I suspect they’ve missed a trick by not adding a cause-related overlay to counter-balance the $1m prize  - but there’s a lot to like here, in particular the integration of Kodak’s ‘Kodak Moments’ heritage; the opportunity to leverage the wonderful imagery that great golf courses provide; and the season-long campaign platform. What I most like is that, as the Kodak blog reveals, Kodak planned their activation upfront - one of the keys to successful sponsorship.

By Tim Crow on November 28th, 2008

Tags: Branded content, Default, Experiential marketing, Golf, New Product Development, PGA Tour, Public relations, Sales promotion, Sponsorship, Tiger Woods

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Congratulations to the Guinness team who picked up their fourth award last night for the title sponsorship of rugby’s Guinness Premiership. The sponsorship, managed on behalf of Guinness by Synergy, won the Rugby Business Award for Rugby Sponsor of the Year (over $500k). 

The judges particularly commended the ground breaking work on the Guinness Club Together campaign across 2007/8. Synergy manages all aspects of the sponsorship from strategic consulting to experiential events and PR.

 

By Dominic on November 18th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, Guinness, Guinness Premiership, Public relations, Rugby, Sponsorship, Sponsorship consultancy, Synergy

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The Barbie Store has opened in Buenos Aires. It is an immersive experience where girls can shop for clothes, have their nails and hair done, peruse the latest dolls and buy Barbie accessories such as wristwatches, two-way radios and play laptops. And, of course, there are doll, dolls and more dolls.

Entry is free, although admission to the Casa de Barbie, the fantasy-land, is about $10. A manicure runs about $6, hair braiding costs as much as $20, and an elaborate “Barbie Full Style” hairdo can set Mum back $38. And, I have no doubt that every little girls leaves with a doll with the latest outfits as well. What a great concept - sell the dolls and the Barbie experiences as well – what a money spinner!

This concept is Mattel’s first experiment with experiential marketing and unsurprisingly it has been such a success that ‘Barbiedom’ may be replicated globally. But is doesn’t stop there……….

Next year Barbie turns 50 so will it be time for Barbie to slow down and start wearing comfortable shoes? Absolutely not. Mattel Inc. plans to market Barbie as a fashion brand. Mattel Inc. is sponsoring New York’s Mercedes Benz Fashion Week and is also the first toy company to agree a three-year partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America. Designers will be creating life sized outfits that reflect the ‘world of Barbie’ for a catwalk show at February’s New York fashion week. “For many young girls, [Barbie is] their first association with fashion and dressing up and changing clothes,” Fern Mallis, London Fashion Week New York. 

So Barbie goes high fashion. It is also rumoured that Mattel want to launch ‘Plastic Smooth’ a make-up line with skin care treatments. The new Barbie fashion collection will go on sale internationally with ‘The House of Barbie’ flagship store planned for Shanghai. Here girls and women will be encouraged, say Mattel to, ‘nibble on truffles, smear on pink-tinted mud masks and shop for clothes for themselves and their dolls’.

 Clearly, for Barbie, life begins at 50.

By Lisa Woodward on November 17th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, New Product Development, Sponsorship

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20 men in a room hugging was the scene last Wednesday night at Harlequins at the Guinness Club Together, ‘Rugby Essentials’, event. Guinness Club Together is a grassroots initiative developed to work with rugby clubs. It is free to join and in exchange for collecting and sending in Guinness keg caps, clubs are able to redeem a host of prizes, merchandise and other sought after items from the online catalogue.

The events are being hosted by Guinness Premiership referees, players and coaches demonstrating training techniques, warm-up drills as well as offering advice on the new and controversial Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) . Wayne Barnes, a Guinness Premiership referee, provided an interactive session on the ELVs. Clubs have now been playing the new laws for a few months and this gave them a chance to discuss how they are being interpreted by both the players and referees. It was the coaching portion of the evening that prompted a group of fully grown men to get up and hug each other as Colin Osborne, the Quins coach, demonstrated the wrestling techniques that the squad use to warm up.  The events have been kept small and intimate to ensure that the attendees get an opportunity to interact and really get what they want out of the session.

I am a rugby fan but last week some of the jargon really took it to the next level and I did wonder at times had it been in a foreign language I might have had more chance of interpreting it! It was really great to see the audience so fully engaged and, at times, mesmerised.

The purpose of the ‘Rugby Essentials’ events is for Guinness to target the core rugby audience and club opinion formers and to engage them in their passion giving them a valuable rugby insight that they can take back to their respective clubs. This is a really great way for Guinness to offer a unique brand experience whilst spreading the wealth of its Premiership sponsorship assets.

The Guinness Club Together Rugby Essential events are travelling around the UK in the next month:

Newcastle Falcons - 29^th October (18.00 – 21.00)
Sale Sharks - 5^th November (18.00 – 21.00)
Northampton Saints - 12^th November (18.00 – 21.00)
Saracens - 19^th November (18.00 – 21.00) 

I would love to be a fly on the flood lights when the guests from last week go back to their clubs and attempt to cajole the players into a bit of a wrestle!

By Lisa Woodward on October 29th, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Experiential marketing, Guinness, Guinness Premiership, Rugby, grass roots sport

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Q: How is the success of the campaign being evaluated?

A: There was no measurable element to the campaign, making it difficult to assess.

These words taken from a recent Event Magazine case study of a one day marketing campaign for GSK’s hayfever brand, Piriton, highlight an area which has, for a long time, been a hot topic within the sponsorship world. Since the early days of sponsorship, research and evaluation techniques have developed significantly, bringing the sponsorship industry in line with many of the ‘traditional’ marketing disciplines like Advertising and DM in terms of measurability. The likes of Millward Brown, SMS (Sports Marketing Surveys) and the TNS Group are world leaders in market research and evaluation and, along with other specialist agencies, have developed techniques honed to measure the use and effectiveness of sponsorship and the brand’s ROI.

With these many techniques at our fingertips, how then are we to develop and encourage the use of Experiential Marketing - a relatively new area - within brands’ campaigns when the brands and agencies themselves are not taking the time or spending the money to evaluate their experiential activity? We all know that most Marketing Directors look for measurable ROIs to evaluate their brand’s success so it is essential that we agencies work with the client to plan and develop experiential campaigns ensuring that they include an element of evaluation to measure their success.

Millward Brown and research agency 2CV recently undertook a study in which they collated opinions from media planners and clients on the events sector. The result was “those that had used experiential activity were more likely to use it again over traditional forms of marketing” -an encouraging response to a relatively young discipline that is gaining more and more recognition amongst brands looking to engage with consumers on a one to one level.

An example of a well executed experiential activity that implemented a measurable element is the Snow Globe, produced by Synergy for BA during their sponsorship of the National History Museum Ice Rink in 2007. Customers were invited into the giant globe to have their photo taken in the snowy interior. The customer was handed a daily code which they had to input on the BA website in order to download their photo or forward it as a festive greeting to family and friends. Each stage of the process was monitored to measure how many people were touched by BA during the activity and an impressive 91% of customers went online to view their photo with a further 47% referring their photo on to friends or family. Compare this to an average of 3% redemption usually seen in competitions and the experiential activity is shown to be vastly more engaging.

Looking at the activation elements of the Piriton campaign mentioned above, free bus rides were given to visitors to the Chelsea Flower Show between Victoria and the venue. Whilst a good way to engage with the consumers, an evaluation development on that element could have been to hand out a sample or gift with a feedback card to measure responses from guests heading to/from the venue. Guests were also given reusable hessian shopping bags containing tissue packs and information on the causes and prevention of hay fever. This could perhaps have also contained a free or money-off voucher for redemption of Piriton products or an opportunity to win an experience or gift through entering a competition. These methods could all have helped in measuring the activity and evaluating its success, providing the Marketing Director with proof of his ROI.

Whilst these suggestions are perhaps not the most exciting or creative of methods to gauge consumer feedback, the point is that a simple extension of an idea, a little use of creativity to expand an already great concept, can provide ways of measuring its success and take brands that one step further towards undertaking further experiential activity when next year’s budgets are being handed out by the big bosses on the top floor.

By Dordie Brett on October 20th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, Sponsorship, Synergy

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If you are a fan of the ‘A’ Team you may remember that the BA Baracus character was scared of flying. Well it seems that this is the case for the real life Mr T. He is starring in the Snickers ‘Get some nuts’ campaign and is flying to the UK for an experiential marketing tour but is terrified to get on a plane over here. His new friends at British Airways have stepped up and are giving him free flights and a ‘fear of flying course’. A BA spokesperson said, ‘We pity the fool that wouldn’t want the honour of flying BA back to the UK.’ Brilliant.

By Lisa Woodward on October 14th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, Public relations

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Brands like Abercrombie and Fitch and Topshop have made a conscious effort to recruit shop staff to reflect and deliver their brand values.  Why then am I so bothered seeing, each night on my journey home, a gathering of Topshop’s young trendy ‘experiential marketing team’ hanging out at Oxford Circus all smoking whilst sporting a t-shirt with the brand proudly emblazoned on it?

One of the things I like about Topshop/man is that the staff working there reflect the style and target customers of the brand (OK, so I maybe pushing the upper age limit of being target market, but still).  This may not register immediately with the average shopper when they’re making their purchase decisions, but I’ve no doubt that subconsciously they feel more comfortable about asking for assistance and shopping in locations where people who look like them work.

Essentially this means that Topshop’s retail assistants could be seen as their experiential marketing staff.  They’re integral to the look and feel of the shop and delivering the brand experience to customers.  Being a brand ambassador doesn’t start and finish within the four walls of London’s biggest shop however, it starts and finishes when the branded t-shirt is put on and taken off.

Smoking has taken on a pariah status amongst many today, me included.  I have friends of both sexes and various ages who won’t date people purely on the basis that they smoke.  If this is an important consideration for them in regards engaging in one type of relationship, it begs the question of how it affects them in building others too e.g. the relationship between the brand and customer.

While I don’t necessarily have the same strength of view as some of my friends on tobacco, seeing Topshop/man staff lounging about smoking and flicking their fag butts into the street does considerably take the gloss off my impression of the brand.  Being involved in representing client brands myself, both individually and through experiential marketing staff I manage on a client’s behalf, I’m always extremely sensitive to the behaviours displayed at all times.  I wonder what Sir Philip Green thinks?

By Malph Minns on October 2nd, 2008

Tags: Brand marketing, Experiential marketing

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The Internet has revolutionised the way music is distributed and considerably weakened the power of record labels.  To add to the record companies’ pain Oasis has now come up with another innovative way of getting their new music heard - commissioning buskers to play tracks from their latest album. 

Oasis had to cancel their New York gig after Noel Gallagher broke his ribs when a ‘fan’ stormed the stage in Toronto and pushed him over.  They have now taken the unusual approach of using buskers to play four tracks from their new album (Dig Out Your Soul) at a variety of New York City locations.

Filming these performances may draw some attention, but I’m not sure employing what is essentially a cover band will endear the music to either current or potential fans.  It’ll be interesting to see how they broach the challenge of actually letting people know that the tracks being played are even Oasis ones.

By Malph Minns on September 12th, 2008

Tags: Experiential marketing, Music

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With all the innovation and technology which surrounds the world of F1, where speed is key and winning is everything, it has become apparent that a showcar based simulator ticks all the boxes in providing The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) with an interactive consumer event with mass appeal and brand engagement.

Over the course of the season to date we’ve taken the RBS Grand Prix Challenge (GPC) to Singapore and most recently Paris where fans in the heart of the respective cities business districts tested their reactions and skills.

Throughout the week of the GPC, queues of inquisitive commuters, tourists and students had the opportunity to get a realistic impression of what it may be like to sit in and race the state-of-the-art simulator based around a full-size AT&T Williams Formula 1 show car. Everyone drives two laps of the RBS track - a specially developed generic circuit - with the fastest three drivers winning the opportunity to attend the Driver Day Race-off, where they went head to head with an AT&T Williams driver either Nico Rosberg or Kazuki Nakajima in front of the mass press packs.

I was amazed with the amount of interest a replica F1 car can generate, especially amongst the male population. The competition to gain the fastest lap time between co-workers and friends was fierce, with many repeat visitors even videoing the track to learn the corners at home!

It is sometimes good to remember that simple events, executed well, which offer consumers an interactive, once in a life time opportunity provide the most meaningful experiences for a brand.

By Emily Waring on July 24th, 2008

Tags: Event management service, Experiential marketing, Formula 1, Sponsorship

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